jed myers / poem

As if Any Battle

as if there’s a grip

against this river

as if any hold

   I’m holding onto 

my core as if 

   to weather this gnashing

pour like a glacier spill

   cold as terror

my gut clench gives itself 

   over so call it 

surrender call it 

   departure or drowning 

or the clasp come un-

   hinged to the last

finger on shore

   as if I’d intend this

I’ve practiced my grasp 

   since I can remember

god had a breast

   and warm arms such 

a nest my first 

   prayer never to fall  

to this river’s pull

   like a storm like a whale’s 

jaw like a war

   as if any battle

ends with a win

   as if I’d swim off

with a ribbon a pin

   with one atom

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Jed Myers' fourth book of poetry, Can’t Be Far, finalist for the Sally Albiso Award, is

forthcoming from MoonPath Press. His last collection, Learning to Hold, won the Wandering

Aengus Press Editors’ Award. Recent honors include the Northwest Review Poetry Prize, the

River Heron Poetry Prize, and Sundress Publications’ Chapbook Editor’s Choice Award. Work

has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Rattle, RHINO, Poetry Northwest, Southern Indiana Review,

The Southeast Review, and elsewhere. Myers lives in Seattle, where he’s Editor of Bracken.